I’m Tyler Young, a meteorology, herpetology, and graphic design nut located in northern California. Most of you are likely here because of weather, given this is norcalweather.net.

I’ve been writing, forecasting, and learning the ropes of meteorology since 2007, but have been interested for most of my life. I write a significant amount during northern California’s stormy season, putting hours, if not days into each post to ensure the forecast is as accurate as possible, explaining things fluidly to keep generally weather-aware readers interested and looking forward to the next update. I explain things on technical levels, but provide points that are universally understandable to suite the tastes of general readers, with goodies for the more meteorologically seasoned readers like myself. Everyone likes to get points though, not generalizations, vague hints, or pointless mentions. Everything I mention gets explained, in hopes to leave all questions satisfied.

I have a keen interest in thunderstorms, and put a big emphasis on convective forecasting when the potential exists. Convective events produce the most amazing meteorological wonders; from tornadoes and powerful microscale to mesoscale wind events, to massive hail and exceptional rainfall. Because the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys here do act as a perfect canvas for miniature (to medium sized-) supercells, forecasting potential severe weather events is top-priority in my mind.

When it comes to the world of weather, there’s many, many blogs and websites out there. I wanted mine to stand out. I looked around at other blogs, not just locally, but across the country, and I noticed the big kicker behind popular blogs was graphical features. Maps, banners, logos, and simple stuff to make things more vibrant and noticeable. A lot of websites lacked this, and while the textual content on a fair amount of these websites was great (if not excellent), they just sat in the shadows due to bland styling. I decided graphic design would be worth the time and effort to learn to help make my forecast content better on the eyes to read; and that I did.

When I first started forecasting and using computers, I started with Paint. Microsoft Paint. Some people these days make amazing content with MS Paint, but for almost everyone else including me, it was horrid. I worked with it, because it’s all I knew of at the time. A couple years later I discovered PowerPoint, and learned the ropes of that, but decided it wasn’t enough. My main aspiration was to make nice looking maps, to draw out what I write about. Thus, I discovered Photoshop, and for a couple years put a crazy amount of time into soaking up all the potential it provides visually. That potential has become reality, and that reality is MetGraphics.net.

On MetGraphics, I provide everything I needed (and still do) for fellow forecasters, meteorologists, and anyone else in the realm of weather who needs to spice up their visuals. It’s taken a hundreds of long and rough days to design the base of products available now, with many more ahead. I’m consistently thinking of new ideas, whether those be redesigns of existing ideas, or completely new ideas that take those long, rough days to get the ball rolling on a new design concept.

Since about the same time I began becoming exceptionally interested in weather, I also developed a deep interest in reptiles. This interest in reptiles sort of sat on the back burner for a long time, but over the years I’ve come to love working with them, with a keen interest in snakes. I find snakes perhaps one of the most misunderstood animals on this planet. I started Placer Snake Removal, a humane snake removal service, in 2012, to work with snakes more often and save the ones I get called out to remove.

I specifically put a lot of effort into saving rattlesnakes, as they’re the most pursued due to them being venomous. Rattlesnake numbers are declining in-general across the U.S., largely due to humans, whether it be directly killing them, or inadvertently via construction/destruction of habitat, roadway mortality, or habitat pollution. Rattlesnakes are underrated creatures — they can have interesting social lives, recent studies have found, and some populations even feature parental care/overwatch of recently born snakes. This is probably not something most people imagine when thinking of snakes, and I’d like to change that.